RYAN LOGAN STANDS in the garage bay where a half dozen CSI technicians go over the van they’ve impounded. Bright construction lights have been set up around it, giving everyone plenty of light to see by. They’re dusting for prints, scouring for DNA—soon they’ll dismantle the whole thing to look for any contraband or other kinds of evidence hidden deep inside.
Ryan is supposedly supervising what’s going on, but his mind is elsewhere. He’s thinking about Rory Yates.
He’s mad at the Texas Ranger.
But he’s also mad at himself.
He’s upset that he let Rory get away with talking to him like that, angry with the Ranger for meddling with his investigation. But, if he’s honest with himself, he knows his anger is mostly—if not entirely—born from jealousy. He hates Rory for being his equal in the charity shoot—and for being more than a match for him in the field.
Rory’s legend has only grown since he joined the task force. Ryan’s afraid his own has diminished. He wants the kind of admiration Rory has earned.
Ryan has never fired his gun in the line of duty, and until that day comes, he’ll never get the kind of respect and approbation he wants. It doesn’t matter how many shooting competitions he wins. It doesn’t matter even if he could beat Rory at next year’s charity shoot.
He needs to be tested in a real gunfight.
Rory makes it look easy. He’s a natural. The way he and Carlos rushed into the gunfight at the raid left Ryan awestruck.
He is jealous of Rory Yates and self-aware enough to know that he shouldn’t be—that it isn’t professional. He’d tried to set aside his jealousy. When Rory and his team had wanted to travel to Colorado and Arizona, Ryan thought this would be a good way to keep him out of sight. He wasn’t banishing Yates to a wild goose chase. Yates was banishing himself.
He certainly hadn’t expected Rory to almost single-handedly take down one of the brothels, rescuing four more women and—again—proving himself to be a genuine hero to the members of the task force. Ryan had snapped when he kicked Rory off the team. But the decision—more of an emotional response than any sort of conscious, thoughtful judgment—had backfired. Not only had it not gotten rid of Rory, but it had also weakened Ryan’s esteem in the eyes of his team members. They think even more highly of Rory now, he’s sure. And they think Ryan was acting petty, jealous, small-minded.
Juvenile.
And the worst part is that Ryan agrees with them. He has to stop competing with Rory Yates. He has to find a way to work with him, not against him. He has to get Rory back over to his side. Even if there were no other reason, he needs to do it to win back his team.
“Sir?”
Ryan shakes himself from his thoughts. An agent standing next to him making a report asks, “Did you hear me?”
“Sorry,” Ryan says. “Please start over.”
“I just wanted to tell you about the car. We were able to track down a previous owner. He sold it on Craigslist about a month ago.”
Ryan nods. It had been the same with the previous vehicles they’d recovered. The plates were stolen. But not the cars.
“I’m not sure it makes much difference,” Ryan says, “but at least we know.”
The agent nods and starts to back away, but then one of the techs shouts for Ryan to come over to the van.
Ryan walks to the back of the van, where the doors are hanging open.
“You’ll want to see this, sir.”
The techs have applied fingerprint powder to the inside of the doors and now dozens of prints are easily visible. Whoever left them—Marta Rivera, they assume—arranged her fingerprints into words.
On the door to Ryan’s left, a message reads:
TAKING ME
TO MR Z
But that isn’t all. On the inside of the other door, she’s written the message:
RANGER
TRAP
Ryan stares at the words.
“Should we call Yates?” the agent next to him says. “Or Castillo?”
Ryan grabs his phone from his pocket and scrolls through the contacts. He holds the phone to his ear, looking nervously at the other agent. Carlos’s number goes straight to voicemail. He tries Rory’s.
“Come on, Rory,” he mutters. “Pick up the damn phone.”